2024 End of Year Update

Hello everyone,

Happy 2025 to you all! We have now been up and running for over three years, and we thought it worthwhile to reflect on the year that was 2024.

Firstly, we provided several operational updates during the year, so there may be some repetition in this post. You can read our Quarter One Review here, Quarter Two Review here and our Quarter Three Review here. In addition to our quarterly updates, we also had an additional News Shorts post here.

We released two new titles during the year. Both were from the Panzer Campaigns series. We started with the Panzer Campaigns: Spring Awakening ‘45 release in March followed by Panzer Campaigns: Smolensk ‘43 in September. We had hoped to have released two other titles before the end of 2024, but that was not to be. As we will discuss later in this post, there is a solid list of releases planned for the first half of 2025.

Early in the year we started our Game of the Week program. This has been a big success for us in terms of engagement with you all. It has given us a platform to highlight various titles and share further background, research and reading. We have just restarted our 2025 program after the Winter Sale, and you can get Napoleonic Battles: Campaign 1814 this week.

As we have done in the prior Quarterly Reviews, here is a list of the titles that were Game of the Week in the fourth quarter of 2024.

 If your favourite title wasn’t covered in 2024, there is a good chance you will see it in ’25.

Updates and upgrades for the existing catalogue continued to be the biggest focus for the team beyond the work needed for new releases and demos. We continue to put a big emphasis on reviewing all the products and where possible standardize across all. Some series continue to be ahead of others in terms of new features, but we are committed to aligning all, where possible. One example is the addition of non-modal dialogs in the Campaigns series (Panzer/Modern/First World War), enhancing game play. We hope to get this functionality across to other titles in the future.

As mentioned in our end of year 2023 review, we moved Civil War Battles, Napoleonic Battles and Musket & Pike under the same programmer. The benefits of this move was apparent quickly, and with the tragic passing of Berto, we consolidated all the modern series under our lead programmer, Andy Edmiston.

With such a tumultuous year, our programming team have been the engine behind many of our updates, new features, and fixes. Henrik did wonders with the AI in the pre twentieth century titles, while Andy focused on the AI in Panzer Campaigns, that culminated with the sweeping changes included in the 4.05.1 patch series. Carlos handled a million little niggles, allowing the other programmers to concentrate on the bigger items. Carlos also built some internal tools that sped up everything from OOB to art creation. Nick also built some revolutionary tools that will allow us to build game maps quicker and pioneered the inclusion of new engine components such as the sound engine now in Squad Battles. You can expect more modern components as we start to shed our ‘Windows 95’ legacy. Andy, as lead programmer, has been involved in everything and brought more updates and upgrades to our software than any time before. That much has changed and been improved. Thanks, guys!

For updates, you may remember that we rolled out a lot of patches in 2023. We decided to try and reduce that and keep it at a more manageable level. This also helped our helpdesk volumes!

Looking at updates by period, the Napoleonic Battles series was upgraded to 4.08 in April, with 4.08.1 following close behind in May. As a bit of an explainer, you will usually see us release two patches in quick succession. We usually lead with a few popular titles in the first patch, in this case Campaign Waterloo and The Final Struggle Demo. This allows us to get many more players trying any changes and identifying bugs that our testing teams may have missed. These can then be corrected in the subsequent patch that updates the whole series. The most important inclusion in these patches, beyond engine changes was the work to standardize game data values across titles. This reflected the fact that different designers and tools were available when the games were originally created, and we believed it was time to align values where possible. Rich worked tirelessly for over a year to get the new framework in place and implemented.

Civil War Battles rolled out version 4.05 in April. Version 4.05.1 released in April as well. Ease of play and improvements in AI were front and centre in these updates.

With an increased focus on Musket & Pike with the release of Great Northern War, and Thirty Years War in 2023, another round of updates was made available in March. Version 4.04 included an expansion pack of additional scenarios for Great Northern War and all titles were updated shortly after to 4.04.1.

The Naval Campaigns series moved onto version 4.04 in August, firstly for Jutland and subsequently for the other titles. Gary added a lot of new content with these patches, and importantly, an expansion for Tsushima. As mentioned in the blog post: Tsushima was the smallest non-demo game to ever be published by John Tiller, with only 11 scenarios to offer up. With the release of this new version, that number jumps to 49 (!) when you include the scenarios for the campaigns.

Panzer Campaigns by product count, is our largest series with thirty-one titles. With the release at the end of March of Spring Awakening ’45 the version number was incremented to 4.04. Though there was not a raft of changes in 4.04, we decided to use this version as our base build for the future. This was the last code that Berto had worked on before he passed and was prior to Andy becoming more deeply involved. The 4.04 versions were rolled out during May and June.

Smolensk ’43 was released in September, A preview article, highlighted the big changes coming in the 4.05 version. This was the first code Andy had worked on, and he managed to clear a backlog of requests that had built up during Berto’s illness. More significantly, a lot of time was spent reviewing the AI code and a raft of changes made to make it ‘less dumb’. The addition of non-modal dialogs and the improved AI and AI scripting saw Smolensk ’43 play well.

With so many titles, we staggered the new 4.05.1 update across a range of releases in October and November. You can read more on the various updates here; First World War Campaigns, Western Front - 1944, Asian & Modern and Panzer Campaigns, Eastern Front – Blitzkrieg, Western Front – 1940 and Italian, European Modern Campaigns, Eastern Front – 1943, and North Africa and Eastern Front 1944/45. The additions added in the 4.05 series, were probably the most significant code changes since John Tiller last worked on the series.

Along with the update to 4.04 and subsequently 4.05.1, Modern Campaigns and First World War Campaigns had significant content changes. Jison, the artist responsible for the First World War Campaign series, created a new high-resolution graphics, which we previewed in the 4.05.1 update post here.

Modern Campaigns: Danube Front ’85 also had a new campaign created by Mark ‘Midge’ Middleton that was released as part of the 4.05.1 patch. Mark provided the back story for the campaign in this very interesting blog post.

The Panzer Battles 4.02 update was released in March. You can read what changed in version 4.02 here.

Squad Battles had a slightly quieter 2024, than 2023. The big change was the move to version 4.03 that we previewed here. Areas that had been confusing players such as off-board support were reworked and simplified, while a range of bugs were squashed. The updating of Eagles Strike to the new standard was a highlight, and the increase in sales was proof that the upgrade process is worthwhile. The previously upgraded titles moved to version 4.03.1 in March. Grenada was updated to version 4.03.2 and additional content add in May.

We also previewed the next Squad Battles title to be upgraded, The Proud and the Few in December. This will include all the latest engine changes, new graphics, and new campaigns.  A quick comment on the Squad Battles upgrades, or dearth of them. We had really hoped to get a consistent rollout of updated titles during 2024. This obviously didn’t happen. The workload in graphics and sound is more onerous than expected and the enhancements require both unit data, order of battle, and in some cases scenarios to be updated. This is taking a lot of time and can be stop/start with new titles taking precedence. We apologise for the current pace, but we are managing with what resources we have currently. The good news is that you should have the upgraded The Proud and the Few soon.

In all, ninety-four of the one-hundred-and-thirteen titles have been upgraded in 2024. That is over eighty-three percent of the catalogue and has required significant time and resources to handle new builds, patches, and the support to migrate you, our customer base. News on the remaining titles update plans will be forthcoming during 2025.

Blog posts and email continue to be an important way for us to both message and interact with the community. There were ninety-six(!) blog posts during the year, a rate of eight per month on average, and significantly higher than the forty-four posts in 2023. Many of these posts have been linked to the addition of Game of the Week every Monday, but there were also a range of informational posts that provided further insight into game play, game design and other interesting topics. Below is a list and links to these articles.

Our dedicated forums continue to grow as a destination, with many of the more immediate questions and feedback being discussed and resolved there. There are now over 1200 members of the forum, up from 800 a year ago. There is now nearly 2,700 topics compared to last years, 1,500 topics, and over 16,000 individual posts across these topics. Readership is much higher, as you only need to register in order to post.

A few statistics for the year.

Our total orders were up by 9%, compared to 2023. The primary difference between the years is the increase due to the Game of the Week promotion. Our average order value also grew 6% year on year, but at a slower rate than 2023 where it was up 14%. An obvious offset is the increased number of Game of the Week sales that were not in the mix in 2023. That said, we have seen more people taking advantage of the bulk discount that is available when you spend $200 or more, particularly during our sales.

We saw our site visits (sessions) up by 34%, with growth in every month, other than December. This followed a large 29% increase in 2023. Of interest, many of the additional visits were tied to emails & blog posts. With a higher number of blog posts, people visited more often, and tended to spend longer on-site generally. Sessions are a way of measuring both the number of visits and time spent on a website, and we’re pleased to see this number still growing strongly.

An important, related statistic is the returning customer rate. This measures the number of customers who bought twice or more in a year. In 2023, 65% of our customers bought from us more than once and the rate was higher for first time buyers. This year, the returning customer rate was down at 61% but is still an exceptional metric. First time buyers continued to return more often, indicating that those customers saw value after their first visit. Overall, out of our total customer orders, our share from first time customers was up by 12% who had never bought from HPS, JTS or WDS previously. New customers are always a good indication of how well you are reaching people who didn’t previously know about your products.

Additionally, in our efforts to increase awareness we made multiple advertising efforts during the year. We ran spots on two YouTube channels - Epic History and Real Time History during October. We ran multiple ads on Strategy & Wargaming (and will continue to do so into 2025), were featured multiple times on Talley Ho Corner, and ran multiple ad's on Facebook during our sale periods. And last but not least, the Marine Corps Association featured us several times - in their Video series on First Manassas, and as sponsors for multiple events.

Looking at which series were the most popular.

Panzer Campaigns led with 23% of all sales followed by Napoleonic Battles (13%) and Civil War Battles (13%) and Musket & Pike and Squad Battles on 11% each. Keep in mind that four of these five series have the most individual titles compared to the other series, so have a range advantage (Musket & Pike being the exception). All five also have a free demo game. They have all had an update in 2024, and Panzer Campaigns having the only two new titles released in 2024, had an additional boost. 

A fairer view is when the series volume is divided by the number of titles in a series to get an average per title volume. Comparing that to the average volume overall shows which series is above or below the average. In the table below the average volume overall is equal to 100%. Anything over 100% means that the total units per title is higher. This resulted in a very different mix.

Musket & Pike was our best performing series per title, buoyed by the release of the Vienna 1683 Demo in December 2023. The 241% means that we sold each title in 2024 at a rate 2.4X higher than the average across the current 113 titles. Panzer Battles, at 210%, like 2022 and 2023 performed very well on a per title basis, despite it being way too long since a new title was released. Modern Campaigns performed well, on the back of the Quang Tri ’72 Demo and renewed interest in Danube Front ’85. Modern Air Power made the list based upon the number of downloads of the Modern Air Power Demo. That also resulted in an increase in orders of the two paid products. Naval Campaigns also saw similar performance, also on the back of the Spanish-American War Demo.

At a product level, demos took all top ten downloads with the Musket & Pike: Vienna 1683 Demo taking the top spot followed by Panzer Campaigns: Mius ’43. Of the top five paid titles, Panzer Campaigns: Spring Awakening ‘45 was a 2024 release, along with the four existing titles, Musket & Pike: Thirty Years War, Civil War Battles: Gettysburg, Squad Battles: Eagles Strike and Panzer Campaigns; Normandy ‘44.

These statistics underline the strength of the business and the continued engagement of you, our customers. The fact that you continue to support us during a cost-of-living crisis, where every dollar matters is heartening.

We are getting very excited about our release schedule for 2025.

We announced the next Musket & Pike game, War of the Austrian Succession in September. This is a big title, on a fascinating subject rarely known outside of Europe. The blog post that previewed this title gives a great background to understand what happened and what will be in the title.

There are currently over eighty scenarios going to be included in game, covering locations across Europe, including Germany, Italy, the Low Countries and even Scotland.

Here are some additional screenshots:

Our first ever original series, Sword & Siege, has been in development for several years.

The Crusades: Book I, is the first title in our pre-gunpowder series, and we previewed it here. The response from you all has been overwhelming based on the number of comments posted against the article. Though based on our existing Musket & Pike series, there are significant differences in both feel and play. We continue to work hard on this title’s development, and believe we are getting closer to release. There are already additional titles being worked on, and we expect that like our other series, you can expect additional engine enhancements with each release.

Here are some further screenshots, the first three, showing the various 2D graphical choices.  

With the excitement around War of the Austrian Succession and Crusades: Book I, we would like to announce a third title that we expect to release in the first half of the year. If we manage our planned timelines, this will be the most games we have ever released in a six-month period.

The third title is Mike Prucha’s, Panzer Campaigns: Poland ’39.

Mike is the developer for both Panzer Campaigns: Scheldt ’44 and the WDS revamp of Panzer Campaigns: France ’40. These titles are known for their depth of research, innovative scenarios, and detailed orders of battle. Panzer Campaigns: Poland ’39 probably surpasses both, in all respects.

We expect Poland to ship with over forty scenarios, including the full 158-turn campaign and its variants. The master map is probably one of the largest we have ever shipped at nearly one-million hexes(!) and covers the area from the Baltic States in the north to Austria and Romania in the south, while Poland is flanked by Germany to the west and the Soviet Union to the east.

There are multiple orders of battle (OOB) as there were significant changes in force composition over the campaign and the largest OOB has nearly 12,000 units. The nations included are the Polish, Germans, Czechoslovaks, Soviets, Slovaks, and Ukrainians. The Germans can be further be segmented into Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, SS and SA. The detail included is very impressive, and anyone that has looked at Mike’s OOB for Operation Market-Garden, knows the depth of research employed. This will be the only World War 2 title where the Soviets are on the Axis side.

The following images show examples of the Polish, German and Soviet OOBs.

There will be additional changes to the game engine that will be rolled out to the other titles, post Poland ’39 release. This includes further AI enhancements, expanded armored train rules, as well as new ‘Conditional Reinforcements’. Conditional Reinforcements allow designers to tie scheduled units to objectives, and they will only arrive if the objective is currently held by the friendly side.

From a game play perspective, don’t expect this to be a German cakewalk. Many of the Axis force are untested and blitzkrieg is an unproven doctrine. The attack in the Low Countries and France a year later was built on the learnings from the very hard fighting in Poland.

Here are a few recent comments from some of our testers playing a few of the larger scenarios:

This is a great scenario, one of the best I have played across the (Panzer Campaigns) series. Sometimes you do all the fighting at the front line until the AI is destroyed and then have an anticlimactic advance purely to get the objectives and win, not with this scenario. Polish AI fighting to the end and across the map. Lots of tough fighting and rapid mobile movement, Polish units popping up in unexpected places. The score line is flattered by the AI not preventing isolation. This will be a great HTH game I suspect.

This scenario (0909_01b_Bzura_Complete) is one of the most interesting and crazy scenarios I have played to date. At any given point, both sides are simultaneously attacking and defending, retreating and digging in... So far this is a very enjoyable scenario, with a myriad of possible approaches for both players.

Really enjoying this one second time round. The Limited Victory locations, large map, all round design really comes through. For the first time in the Panzer Campaign series, I really feel like I'm trying a Blitzkrieg. The armour racing far in advance of anything taking a few knocks along the way, the motorised infantry trying to keep up and the foot plodders bringing up the rear and dealing with all the tough fortifications the armour has long since bypassed in its grab for the victory locations. Really works well. Whilst the victory values may need adjusting between the A.I and head-to-head games it’s a real treasure of a scenario.

We plan to share a lot more on this title before release, including Mike providing more detail on what is included in the game and his design decisions and process.

Here are a few work-in-progress screenshots:

Finally, some comments about the WDS Team.

I am almost cutting and pasting what we said in our 2023 End of Year Update as it holds true for where we are today.

Though we have paid tribute to our programmers earlier, they are the reason that have been able to deliver on the promise we made to improve the game engines and AI. These improvements should be more evident to you as we close off 2024 and continue to expand in 2025. We are blessed to have some amazing coders working with us and they are helping us deliver completely new work like the Sword and Siege series.

We have also put a big emphasis on improving our artwork, particularly in the pre-twentieth century series. We have some very talented artists and art coordinators in-house, but we have also engaged some amazing external artists. The artwork in Great Northern War and Thirty-Year War, as well as the upcoming War of the Austrian Succession and the Crusades: Book I are examples of improvements that have been made.

There is also an army of very dedicated individuals that either create and lead projects or help with the improvement of existing titles or series. These people are the heart and soul of WDS, and their work output, energy and enthusiasm are a godsend. These people ensure you get the games you want.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention the unsung heroes, our support and testing teams. We pride ourselves on personalising any interaction with WDS and ensuring questions are answered as promptly as possible. Our testing team are there to ensure you get the best possible product, and when there are issues, help with the resolution. Support and testing are one of the reasons so many of you come back to buy from us again.

We are still here after our third year of operations! We have a great pipeline of new projects and can’t wait to show you what is coming next.

We couldn’t do it without you all, and your enthusiasm to support us and share your feedback has helped shape us into the company we are today.

Thank you again, Happy New Year, and enjoy your gaming in 2025!